


two men and their dictionaries

by greasytree



Series: Post Freshman Fifteen [1]
Category: B.A.P
Genre: Brownie Bunch, College!AU, M/M, library assitant!youngjae
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-15
Updated: 2013-11-15
Packaged: 2018-01-01 15:09:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1045369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greasytree/pseuds/greasytree
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>his coworker is useless and sometimes students can be the worst, but youngjae swears he doesn't hate his job. college au. for the brownie bunch exchange</p>
            </blockquote>





	two men and their dictionaries

Just one more hour and Youngjae is free from this hellhole. He knew he should have signed up for three hours. Four hours was asking too much of a college student, but Himchan always guilt- trips him into staying the extra hour anyways. Goddamnit, Himchan. Thank god, though, he doesn’t work in the main library. Freshmen are hard to deal with, okay?  
  
Youngjae is officially a “program assistant” on papers but in reality the only go-to person because his coworker is shit at his job. Why on earth Youngjae chose to apply for this job his freshman year is beyond him. Now, he sort of wishes he hadn’t, but the pay is good and most of the college’s students don’t know where the Special Collections library is located, let alone are aware that their library offers one of the most prestigious collections of rare books in the country. So, the fact that on most days it is a ghost town in there does have its advantages. But days like these have his head spinning.  
  
“What do you mean that I can’t photocopy this book?”  
  
Youngjae wishes he could roll his eyes, but Himchan would be on his ass for that. “Because, this book is  _printed on recto leaf and each page has been designed by a specially assigned typographer and artist_. It’s a rare book. You can’t photocopy it without the Librarian’s permission.”  
  
“I don’t understand.”  
  
Youngjae wants to beat his brain in. “Look, if you would like, you can speak to the Librarian, Kim Himchan. He is at a meeting and he should be back,” he glances at the clock, “in roughly thirty minutes.”  
  
The student slams the book onto the countertop. “This is ridiculous!” she fumes as she leaves the book, gathers her things, and stomps out of the department.  
  
Youngjae sighs and carefully picks up the book to check for damages. Himchan is not going to be happy. Thankfully, there are no visible bruises to the binding, but Youngjae writes a note on a post-it notifying Himchan about the incident.  
  
Youngjae glances at the clock again. 53 more minutes to go.  
  
The department door opens again, and in walks another student. Youngjae briefly glances up before continuing to write his report. Most students walk into the collections only to realize that they are lost and immediately leave right after apologizing profusely for the interruption. It is only the students that hesitantly come to the front desk, all awkward and shuffling their feet, that Youngjae stops his work to help out.  
  
The student, a young male, possibly a third year (but what would Youngjae know) acknowledges Youngjae with a smile before walking over to the display cases and looking into them. This month, the Special Collections is hosting a wonderful display of German Feminist texts. For a grand tour from our highly esteemed Special Collections librarian, please visit the collections at the following times.  
  
Youngjae returns to his work.  
  
_Himchan,_  
_Student wanted to photocopy_ Peter Piper’s Principle of Plain and Perfect Pronunciation _. I told her that it was not possible. She became upset and handled the book carelessly. No visible damage. Student ID: C00336369._  
                    - YJ  
  
He sticks the post-it to the front cover of the book and places both book and post-it to the side. If he is lucky, Himchan will not see the post-it until after Youngjae has left for the day.  
  
He glances towards the clock. 42 minutes to go.  
  
A throat clears. Youngjae looks away from the object to find the student standing before the counter. Youngjae blinks to catch his bearing.  
  
“How can I help you?” he asks, not unkindly.  
  
“Yeah, uh, I was wondering if I can look at a book about the college’s architecture?” the boy says.  
  
_You got to be kidding me_ , Youngjae groans internally.  
  
He quickly puts on his best smile. “Unfortunately, our collections are so huge that it will be impossible for me to find just one book given by your description in such a short of amount of time. If you would please, to the left is a computer that you may use to search the library’s database. Please write down call #, author, and title for each book, and I will be happy to help you from there.”  
  
“But—”  
  
“Here is a post-it and a pencil.” Youngjae offers up both items.  
  
When it looks like the student is about to say something else, Youngjae waves the post-it in front of the student’s face until the student, probably fed up by now, takes the stupid thing and stalks away to the computer. Youngjae immediately drops his smile. He is now convinced students at this college have a problem with reading signs.  
  
Youngjae glances at the clock, 37 minutes to go. Besides the always taunting object was a sign in bold font explaining the procedure for checking out items from the Special Collections.  
  


  
_NOTICE:_  
_PLEASE HAVE CALL #, AUTHOR, AND TITLE BEFORE APPROACHING THE FRONT DESK. BELOW IS AN EXAMPLE OF AN ACCEPTABLE INQUIRY OF A BOOK:_  
_CALL #: P Grabhorn-Hoyem_  
_AUTHOR: LITTLEJOHN, DAVID_  
_TITLE: DR JOHNSON AND NOAH WEBSTER; TWO MEN AND THEIR DICTIONARIES_  
_THANK YOU._  
-  _KIM HIMCHAN, LIBRARIAN_  


  
Youngjae raps his knuckles against the counter top. No one else is there to call him out on it anyways. Which reminds him, where is Jongup?  
_Note to self: bring up Jongup’s uselessness as a coworker at the next possible employee luncheon_ ; He writes on a post-it. He sticks it to the underside of the mouse pad.  
  
A throat clears. Youngjae looks up to see the same student before him, holding the post-it note. Youngjae quickly takes it. “Wait right here,” he says and then adds on a “please” for good measure.  
  
He goes into the back room, and quickly thanks the lord that Himchan left the vault open. Last time Youngjae was left to man the fort, Himchan forgot, and Youngjae was left to deal with a few grumpy students. Youngjae skips past the Juvenile, the Bender, the Book Arts, and quickly strides down the College Archive shelf. He softly hums to himself, and quickly but carefully selects the books and documents from the shelf. With all three items, he heads back to the counter where the student waits, looking slightly put-off. Youngjae ignores that.  
  
“May I please see your student ID?” Youngjae holds out his hand.  
  
“Oh. Yeah.” The boy fumbles in his pants back pocket, takes out his wallet, and from there, his ID card. He then gives it to Youngjae.  
  
Youngjae takes the card and the scanner. He runs the scanner against the card. One time. Two times. Three times. It still doesn’t read the ID.  
  
“Piece of shit,” he grumbles to himself.  
  
“I’m sorry?”  
  
“Nothing,” Youngjae replies, waving a hand in a dismissive manner for good measure. He manually inputs the ID number into the system.  
  
_Jung Daehyun, ID: C0022563_  comes up onto the computer screen. He hands back the card, and the student puts it back into his wallet.  
  
Youngjae, as he begins scanning each book into the computer, informs the student that “Books are not to be taken out of the collections. You may use one of the tables for your leisure. Collections close at five. Please—” the scanner doesn’t read the third book’s barcode. Youngjae sighs noisily as he manually inputs the barcode into the computer. “Please have books checked back in before then. No pens, no food, and no liquids near the books. Any questions?”  
  
Youngjae gathers the three books and hands them over to the student.  
  
“Ugh…no…?” the student seems confuse. Youngjae ignores that.  
  
“Great. Please have the books checked back in,” he glances at the clock, “in 22 minutes. Thanks.”  
  
The student doesn’t immediately walk away instead choosing to stand idle by the counter. Youngjae raises an eyebrow when it looks like the student is about to say something else, but then the student quickly turns away. Youngjae can hear the student mumbling to himself, but ignores it. He instead eyes the student, ready to pounce if the student fails to comply with the rules. This would not be the first time Youngjae had to ask a student to leave the library. Kindly, of course.  
  
After a minute, Youngjae turns back to the project that he has abandoned for the last thirty minutes. His current project is entering every book’s typography into the system. The fun part is when a book’s colophon will leave out any mention of the book’s typography. During these instances, Youngjae will have to research for hours before getting any results. He just hopes to god that the typography he enters into the computer system in the end is the correct one. For the past two months, Youngjae has only gone through half of  _one_  of the collections. He has ten or so more collections to go.  
  
He seriously hates this project.  
  
A commotion by the door has Youngjae swinging away from the computer again, forgetting all about the project he oh so hates.  
Jongup is attempting to carry boxes twice his height into the collections while at the same time push an empty cart. Youngjae rolls his eyes as he quickly gets up and rushes over to help.  
  
Youngjae grabs one of the boxes that threaten to fall over. “You know, you could just put the boxes on the cart. It would probably be easier than what you are doing now.”  
  
“Oh.” Jongup smiles sheepishly.  
  
Youngjae stops himself from saying anything else. How can he stay irritated at a kid like Jongup? “Whatever. Let’s just get these boxes in before they fall over. Himchan would have our hides.”  
  
Jongup makes to salute, but quickly thinks better of it as one of the boxes wobbles carelessly above him. “Yes, sir.” He grins.  
  
They manage to get the boxes into the vault before Jongup remembers that the boxes are supposed to go into Himchan’s office. “Oops.”  
  
Youngjae throws his hands up in frustration and leaves Jongup to transfer the boxes all by himself.  Youngjae wants to scream. Coworkers are useless.  
  
Youngjae walks back out of the back room, and becomes surprised to see the student waiting by the counter with all three books held carefully in two hands. Good. Youngjae would have given the student a earful if he had caught the student holding the library’s precious babies with anything but careful hands.  
  
“Done already?” Youngjae asks as he sits back down in the swivel chair. He holds out his hands for the books.  
  
“Ugh, yeah. I would like to return these. Do you need my ID?” the student asks.  
  
Youngjae shakes his head as the student hands him all three books. “Nope. You are all set.”  
  
“Great—” the student begins to say.  
  
But Youngjae cuts the student off before he can say anything else further. “Have a wonderful day.” He uses the words as a dismissal. Countless times, students have staid afterward, often to strike up a conversation Youngjae was not willing to hold. Youngjae just wants the day to end, and if it means being a little forward, he will do it.  
  
He turns to the computer screen and begins checking in the books. The scanner is useless of course, so Youngjae has to manually input each barcode.  
  
He hates his job.  
  
“There,” he says triumphantly as he sets the last book to the side—all successfully checked-in. Someone clears his throat, and Youngjae quickly looks away from the computer screen to see that the student still has not left. Odd.  
  
Youngjae raises an eyebrow. “Is there something I can help you with?”  
  
The student opens his mouth to speak, but Youngjae quickly cuts in again. “You know, the Collection will be closing in” he glances at the clock “18 minutes.”  
  
The student looks taken aback. Youngjae ignores that. The student moves to pen his mouth, but seems to think better of it, only to open his mouth again. It reminds Youngjae strangely of a goldfish. Youngjae likes goldfish. Youngjae shakes his head. Focus, Youngjae.  
  
The student ends up just frowning.  “You know what,” he says, “this can wait for another day.”  
  
If Youngjae isn’t mistaken, the student sounds a little annoyed.  The student storms away. Youngjae watches him leave but as soon as the double doors close behind the student, he shrugs and returns back to his project.  
  
“So, how did it go?” Jongup’s voice asks from behind him.  
  
Youngjae jumps. He narrows his eyes at Jongup. “How did what go?” he snaps.  
  
Jongup blinks at him. Youngjae blinks back. Jongup blinks again.  
  
“Spit it out,” Youngjae demands.  
  
“Hyung…are you serious?” Jongup finally says.  
  
“What?”  
  
“Daehyun has been wanting to talk to you for, like, a whole month and—”  
  
Youngjae cuts him off. “Who’s Daehyun?”  
  
Jongup looks at him incredulously. “The student who just left.”  
  
“For a whole month?” Youngjae repeats, honestly a little surprised by the mere idea that someone could wait so long to talk to anybody. “Why couldn’t he just talk to me? Am I scary or something?” Youngjae is entirely convinced that he is an angel; has been one since the day he was born. There is not a mean bone in his body. His mom says—  
  
Jongup barks out a laugh. Youngjae frowns at that. “Well, I don’t know, maybe because he has a thing for you, and you’re not exactly Winnie the Pooh while on the job,” Jongup answers sarcastically.  
  
“A thing? For me?”   
  
Jongup’s face morphs into horror. “Hyung, are you seriously that oblivious?”  
  
“ _What_?”  
  
Jongup shrugs and walks back into Himchan’s office.  
  
Youngjae splutters. “Yah, Moon Jongup! Come back here!”


End file.
